Charles Schultz' Peanuts
character, Charlie Brown, was "born" in newsprint in 1950. As he was approximately
six at the time, by all rights he now should be at least 59 years old.
Little
Orphan Annie, by the same logic, must be pushing past her ninth
decade, and Dick
Tracy is so far over the hill that he must have exhausted his police
pension by now. In real life, the only way we'd determine Alley
Oop's age would be by carbon dating his fossil. Not to take anything
away from these classic cartoon characters; comic strip longevity has always
been a given, limited only the mortality of the creator (sometimes), the
size of its readership, and the whims of its syndicate.

There are exceptions to every rule, though,
and this feature deals with one of them. Frank King, creator of
Gasoline
Alley, was the first cartoonist to acknowledge, not resist, the relentless
tread of time, allowing the cast of his strip to age just as we do. This
seemingly minor innovation kindled a readership interest in the strip that
would remain throughout four generations of his cartoon cast.

Frank O. King was born in 1883 in Caston,
Wisconsin. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Tomah, coincidentally
near Wisconsin's Kickapoo Hills, the very place that would serve Al
Capp as an inspiration for his unearthly concoction, "Kickapoo
Joy Juice." King landed his first professional art job at age 19 at the
Minneapolis Times in 1901, thanks to the recommendation of a traveling
salesman who spotted a cartoon sign that King had painted for a local shoe
shine parlor. After working in the Times' art department for four years,
King left to sharpen his art skills at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.

After a year, King returned to newspaper
and advertising work until moving to the Chicago Tribune in 1909, gradually
easing into comics and cartoons, drawing a number of quarter and half page
strips like Tough Teddy,
The Boy Animal Trainer, Here
Comes Motorcycle Mike!, and
Hi Hopper (the story of a frog).
His first jump to a full page strip occurred on January 31 1915 with his
Sunday feature, Bobby Make-Believe. King also drew a second, half-page
feature for the Tribune that proved so popular that poor Bobby was soon
eclipsed, passing into obscurity in 1919.

The new strip soon won a full page of its
own, and on October 24, 1920, Gasoline Alley was born in the Tribune
(the daily commenced August 24, 1919 in the New York Daily News).

At first the strip was simply devoted to
America's perpetual love affair with automobiles, based on real people
the creator had known on Chicago's South Side. "My brother... had a
car that he kept in the alley with a fellow by the name of Bill Gannon
and some others. I'd go to his house on Sunday, and we'dgo down the alley
and run into somebody else and talk cars. That was the beginning of Gasoline
Alley," King said in an interview.

The strip's cast of car-tinkering buddies
expanded with a significant addition on St. Valentine's Day in 1921. On
that morning the amiable, somewhat bumbling Walt Wallet opened his door
to find a small infant on his steps. From there on Gasoline Alley
became a family strip, with the clock ticking away in real time, as the
child Skeezix saw "Uncle" Walt marry "Aunt" Phyllis in 1926, gained a brother,
Corky, in 1928, had his first shave in 1937, enlisted in the army in 1942,
married Nina Clock in 1944, and had a child, Chipper, on April Fool's Day
(!) in 1945. The progression of normal growth and change throughout the
normal ups and downs of family life, school, marriage and employment has
entertained the strip's fans throughout its 78-year timespan, a full four
generations of the Wallet clan.

The humor of Gasoline Alley is gentle
and low-keyed, following a meandering storyline of day to day life. King
was well skilled at giving the readers the impression they were looking
in on family life not unlike their own. The charm of the strip was well
served by King's art talents which sometimes got quite playful on the Sunday
page, as when King once played homage to Windsor McCay's
LittleNemo
with a wonderfully surrealistic page, or when he mimicked German Expressionism
on another Sunday page. The artist could be just as impressive on "quieter"
sequences --a walk at twilight, a stroll through the woods --drawing beautifully
composed scenes that were a visual treat.

By his late thirties King had achieved
great prosperity through the increasing circulation of his strip. In 1951
he retired from the Sunday page, turning it over to his assistant Frank
Perry on April 29. In 1958 King won a Reuben for Outstanding story strip,
and 1969, at the age of 88, he passed away.

King's replacement on the daily strip was
Dick
Moores, who began his career as a Disney strip artist (Uncle
Remus, Scamp), and who also worked as Chester Gould's assistant on
Dick
Tracy, as well as assisting Floyd
Gottfredsonon Mickey Mouse.

After fourteen years on the Disney strips,
Moores moved on to assist King in 1956, at first as a scripter and then
taking on drawing tasks. In 1963, when King was in his eighties (but still
inking his strip), Moores was given partnership on Gasoline Alley
and allowed to sign his name with King's. When Frank Perry retired in 1975,
Moores took on the Sunday page as well, meshing its continuity with the
dailies.

Many feel that Dick Moores' work not only
equaled Frank King's but also surpassed it. At any rate, the new characters
he introduced into the strip were happy additions. There's Slim, Skeezix's
well meaning but bumbling son-in-law, Mr. Pert, a shyster and miser in
the neighborhood, the lovable but mentally-challenged Rufus, his crusty
trash-toting friend, Joel, and the sweetly simply country girl, Miss Melba,
the love of Rufus' life. Moores' gift for characterization and humor won
him two Reubens; one in 1975 and his last in 1986, the year he died. Moores
had ably served on the strip for a little over thirty years.

The current writer/artist on the strip,
the forth to inherit it, is Jim
Scancarelli, who first came aboard as Moore's assistant in 1979.
Hi" earliest memories of the strip go back to his childhood when his grandfather
would read the comics page to him. "Littledid I realize that 40 years
later I would be sitting in the next room in that house thinking up and
drawing the continuation of the Wallet family," says Scancarelli.

After the long and respected duration of
the strip, it's surprising and disappointing that there are so few reprint
collections of Gasoline Alley. In 1984 Blackthorne Publishing released
a collection of eight months of Moores' continuity (Rover, the story of
a boy raised as a dog by abusive relatives), but other than that and a
few earlier reprints, Gasoline Alley has been sadly ignored. There
was a wide variety of toys and other merchandise tying into the strip in
the '30s and '40s (now highly desirable collector's items), and even a
radio show (in the 1940s) and a movie (Columbia, 1951). As a humorous slice-of-life
look at America at work and play, Gasoline Alley carries on a worthwhile
tradition of narrative quality.